John Carpenter has announced Cathedral, a new album out 7 August via Sacred Bones Records that arrives alongside his first ever graphic novel, published 4 August through Storm King Comics. New single ‘Lord Of The Underground‘ is out now, complete with a visualiser featuring animated illustrations from the book.
The filmmaker and composer is joined once again by longtime collaborators Cody Carpenter on synths and Daniel Davies on guitar, continuing a partnership that runs through the Lost Themes album series, the recent Halloween films and multiple reworkings of Carpenter’s classic scores. This time, the trio leans into a heavier, more aggressive palette without losing the tension and atmosphere that define the Carpenter sound. As he puts it, “It’s kind of our first heavy metal album.”
Cathedral is built as a fully immersive project, functioning as both soundtrack and narrative engine. Each track aligns with a chapter of the graphic novel, with liner notes guiding listeners through the story, so that it unfurls like a film. Inspired by a vividly cinematic dream Carpenter had in 2024, the story centres on an abandoned church in downtown Los Angeles that turns from a forgotten building into the site of a waking nightmare, drawing investigators toward a centuries-old evil imprisoned within.
“The story informed everything,” said Davies. “John would describe a scene and say, ‘We need a heavy riff here.’ We didn’t set out to make a metal record, but it evolved that way.” Where the Lost Themes albums were written as scores to movies of the mind, Cathedral scores an original story written by Carpenter in collaboration with his wife and creative partner Sandy King and writer Sean Sobczak, illustrated by Federico De Luca and Luis Guaragna.
It was important to Carpenter that the music stand on its own. “It’s all about making the music work,” he said. “Put this thing on and imagine you’re watching a movie. That’s what we want you to do.”
With Cathedral, Carpenter extends his world-building into a tightly wound cross-medium experience, part score, part story, and unmistakably his own. For a director who has shaped horror and genre cinema for five decades, a self-described first metal album is a turn we find exciting!
